As promessas de Deus e as nossas promessas

: um lugar de comunhão e de identidade

Abstract

Popular religiosity is a very deeply present reality in many people’s lives and the Christian community. Throughout history, that wasn’t always positively valued and recognized as a means of achieving experience and relation to transcendence. In the context of popular religiosity, vows take a prominent place and demand acknowledgement and reflection. No one can feel indifferent to the thousands of persons who flock every day to sanctuaries to fulfill their vows, and all the underlying suffering related to them. Facing this reality, we intend to understand people’s reaction when facing limit situations, when confronted with their suffering, or when someone close to them; we also seek to understand how to overcome that fragility and what paths are taken to find the solution of the problem, salvation itself. All these questions helped formulate the starting problematic, to understand the concept of vows, from the originating causes to their final fulfillment, and the consequences generated in the personal life and ecclesiastical commitment of the person who made that vow. To achieve this goal, we elaborated the theoretical matrix to the investigation based on the vow’s phenomenon, having chosen some magisterial interventions that could shed some light on the matter in question. We took care to clarify the concepts of ‘popular religiosity’ and ‘popular piety’, and their connection to the concept of vows. In order to frame the problematic, we reflected on God’s promise in the Bible and its implications in the history of salvation. We conducted some in-depth interviews, with individuals who had recently fulfilled some kind of religious vows, and complemented the investigation by interviewing the rectors of the sanctuaries (Sameiro and São Bento da Porta Aberta), which were the main pool of the investigation. For data analysis, we used the software NVivo, which, by previous categorization, allowed reflection and presentation of the obtained results. For a comprehensive analysis of the vow’s phenomenon, we exposed its connection with votive offerings, as the material expression of the vow’s fulfillment. Finally, we sought to understand vows as a theological place, and also in what ways they help the faithful in their faith experience, from the meeting and the communion with the transcendence perspectives. We concluded by launching some challenging suggestions to positively value vows, with initiatives in the context of evangelization, monitoring and pastoral proposals' elaboration. All of them as ways to strengthen the faithful relation of transcendence and their lay co-responsibility in the context of their community. This investigation is the first in-depth study on the problematic nature of the vow’s phenomenon, from a qualitative perspective and is enriched with a theological reading of the subject in question.

Date of Award	18 Jun 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Luís M. Figueiredo Rodrigues (Supervisor)